


Day Old Hate

by Chicory



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mild Language, Pre-Series, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chicory/pseuds/Chicory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief look into Sam's life before Stanford. Quite possibly an AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Old Hate

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfiction ever! No, sorry, that's a lie. This isn't the first fanfiction I wrote but it's the first fanfiction I've posted for public consumption. Because even though I do not consider this my best work, not even close, I am oddly proud of this little one. Please be kind! I have a very fragile heart!
> 
> This isn't a tale of schmoop and incestuous brother-loving angst even though there is brother-loving angst, just not that kind, not really. This fic is more about Sam's problems, with Dean and John and his version of the family and THE LIFE. But because of a few brief lines this can be read as unrequited Sam/Dean. Although, in my mind Sam and Dean's love for each other is always requited because they are crazy <3
> 
> I actually wrote the first version of this fic a few years ago, but then I decided to read and edit it, and then read it and edit it, and then read it and edit it. It used to have really short scenes from seasons One through Four, but I cut them. I think this ending fits the overall mood of this fic better than the previous one where Sam and Dean got together and then there was lots of brother kissing. *lets out a totally composed squee*
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Title is a song from City and Color. I borrowed it, but the song itself and the lyrics have nothing to do with this fic. Also, the very nature of fanfiction means that I do not own any of this stuff. If I did, I certainly wouldn't be writing fanfiction about it, would I? It'd be canon in that case. The only thing that is mine is this little drabble I wrote—and all the mistakes herewithin.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this even a little!

Dean grows up too fast for Sam to catch up. Suddenly local kids—troublemakers and truants and girls, dozens of different girls—are cooler to hang out with than his geeky little brother. Physical displays of affection go from casual to rare to finally nonexistent. Ruffles and friendly nudges and one-armed hugs change to smacks to the head and punches to the shoulder.

It's as if one morning Sam woke up to find his big brother gone, replaced by a stranger who curses, chases after girls and talks about nothing but sex.

All of a sudden, Dean is _old enough_ while Sam is still just a kid. A kid left behind at Pastor Jim's, at Bobby's, at Caleb's, at anywhere convenient, and he stares after, watches Dean leave with Dad to a hunt after a hunt after a hunt.

But no matter how hard Sam stares at his brother, Dean doesn't look back and then the tail-lights are gone and Sam's alone again.

***

There is a hot and humid summer somewhere Sam doesn't care to be in and doesn't care to remember and one of those ever elusive clues in the next county over.

 _Should only take a couple of weeks, boys,_ which means Dad's going to be gone for at least a month, then come back bitter and drunk, looking for and chasing after another, any monster to kill instead of the thing that took a mom Sam doesn't remember outside of a faded, sacred photo.

What Sam remembers of that summer is the heat, the sweat permanently stuck to his skin and the pain of growing up in an awkward, skinny body, and the days spent training with Dean.

However, it's too late for Sam. He'll never be strong enough or fast enough or smart enough. All already done by Dean before him and the mark was set too high for Sam to reach; always the better soldier, always the better son, while Sam is the outsider of their perfect little unit, the freak to encircle the family of mom and Dad and Dean.

Dean's all smirks and taunts, dancing just out of reach like a wavering mirage in a desert until Sam loses it, angry and frustrated. He dashes after him recklessly— _stupid mistake, Sammy, out there in the field it'd get you killed_ —and ends up face down on the dusty ground, breathless and bruised, still spitting out threats and profanities, trashing to throw Dean off.

Dean is straddling his hips, holds an arm twisted behind his back while he laughs. "C'mon, Sammy, gotta try harder than that."

Sam grits his teeth and holds his breath, lungs strained to burst, desperate to not let Dean see the hot, bitter tears gathering in his eyes and sliding down his cheeks. He can feel Dean's startled surprise a second later, followed quickly by concern, and his grip unwittingly slackens.

"Sammy, hey, c'mon, it was just a joke. Just a joke. You okay?"

Sam twists his body and gets up at last. He wipes his face reluctantly with the back of his wrist, then snaps, "Fuck you, Dean," and slams the door on his way in.

Dad comes back two days later, drunk as Sam predicted, and in the following morning they are on their way to another state.

***

Sam runs away when he's fourteen, believing that no one would bother to come after him.

He knows he's a hindrance. Now Dad and Dean can go off without him slowing them down. Sam figures that's how they want it anyway—just the two of them, hunting evil, hunting the thing that killed mom. Only Sam is the oddity and doesn't fit in the equation.

It's the best two weeks of his life, he thinks, decides to remember them that way, his mornings and evenings spent sitting on the front porch of the decrepit house and playing catch with Bones, eyes darting to the road from time to time, half of him waiting for a black, sleek car to show up along the sinuous line of it. He's scared it will, and more scared it won't, something hollow and wide in the pit of his stomach expanding with each day that passes and the road stays persistently empty.

Sam tosses the stick in a wide arch and Bones runs after it, barking madly, golden fur shining in the early morning sun.

By the end of the second week Sam wakes up to a rumbling noise from outside. A car nears the house, rolls to a stop in front of it, and Sam would recognize it anywhere—heart trapped in his throat—the sound of the engine, the fall of boots up the front steps and across the creaky floorboards. Bones whips her tail in the shaded corner of the room, listless from the heat and yesterday's game of chase.

Then Dean is there, with an ugly bruise high on his cheek, towering over Sam, pale and furious, and Sam meekly gets up. After a tense second of silence, he holds up his chin in a stubborn set, starts to say, "Dea—" but is slapped across the face hard, something Dean has never ever done before, not to Sam. The crack of skin on skin is inordinately loud, and Bones lets out a startled bark, scrambling to her feet.

"Pack your fucking things, Sam, _or I swear to fucking God_ —"

And Dean doesn't say a word after that. Not when Sam huddles as small as possible in the passenger seat. Not when he stares out of the window to hide his tears, but his reflection stares at him in the eyes and he can't escape it.

His cheek throbs.

***

Sam sits on Dean's bed, hugging his knees and digging jagged fingernails into the soft palms of his hands, listens to Dad and Dean really yell at each other for the first time in Sam's memory and go at it like the world will end tomorrow.

"He's too young!"

"It's either this or nothing because you sure as hell haven't taken care of Sam like you were supposed to!"

Sam has to bite his tongue to remain silent—he sure as hell isn't asked anyway—has to stop himself from storming in the kitchen and punching Dad in the face for slapping his runaway trip at Dean like that—as if it's Dean's fault when it isn't. It's _Dad's_ job to watch his kids are okay, not Dean's, but Dean only says in a strained, clipped voice, "Yessir," and that's the end of it.

That is how hunting begins for Sam.

***

This is the truth in Sam's world.

Dean has Dad's back and Sam's back, and Sam is supposed to have Dean's back, only he's not really allowed to, because Dean would give his life to protect Sam.

Sam knew it, still argued with Dad in order to stay at the car while Dad and Dean went out in the woods alone, regretted it the second he heard a frantic _Sammy_ and a gunshot, and then Dean is screaming while something—a huge shadow of a thing that is snarling and snapping at his face—slashes him open from chest to hip, his insides a sick gleam in the faint moonlight.

Sam barely has the time to lift his own gun.

Dad's driving too recklessly, almost sliding off the road in his haste to get to the nearest hospital that's still too far because they are _in the middle of fucking nowhere_ , and there is blood on Sam's hands, running through his trembling fingers regardless of how hard he presses and tries to keep it inside Dean, who is bleeding out—fucking _dying_ —in the goddamn back seat of the car, looking small and fragile for the first time in Sam's life and he can't deal with it, can't, can't, _can't_.

They used to sleep together, right on this very same seat, during long trips across the states, snuggled close to each other in a tangle of warm limbs and underneath a threadbare blanket sharing the same air, and this isn't supposed to be happening.

"Keep pressure on the wound, Sam!" Dad shouts, orders, taking small snatches of them from the rearview mirrow, hands bloodless white on the steering wheel.

Dean blinks bleary, heavy eyes at Sam, his expression fond, like the last thing he could ask for is to see Sam. "Hey... c'mon Sammy... stop makin' that face. No one's dyin' here 'kay?"

Sam wants to believe Dean's incoherent slur, wants to believe it so bad his bones ache with it, because he doesn't know what he'll do if Dean dies here, doesn't understand a world that has no Dean in it and has no desire to live in one.

So he keeps pressing on the wound, does his best to keep the tattered skin together, tells Dean to, "Stay awake, don't close your eyes, look at me, we're almost there, c'mon Dean, you can make it, you have to make it, you can't _leave_ me—" and once Dean is sleeping in the hospital bed, stable and treated, Dad clasps Sam on the shoulder, gives him a firm shake once and gravely says,

"You did good, son,"

and that's when Sam has to find the nearest toilet to throw up everything he ate that day.

He has Dean's blood on him.

He has Dean's blood on him and he nearly died and Sam did well.

It's so fucked up he wants to cry, and he spends half an hour hacking up bile and tears before he forcefully pulls himself together, chest shuddering with wet gasps of breath. He splashes water in his face and rinses his mouth, then sneaks back into Dean's room on weak legs. Sam sits down on the chair beside Dean's bed and carefully rests his hand over his.

Dean is still, still like he never is when awake. Still like the dead hardly ever are.

***

There is a fall and a spirit and a cold, rainy afternoon spent in a shitty apartment on the outskirts of a city—largest they've been so far. They are sitting side by side on the ratty couch that came with the apartment, nothing on TV but static, and waiting for Dad to come back.

Sam does his homework while Dean surfs through a picture-blink-picture succession of channels. When he finds a flickering image and puts down the remote Sam picks it up and shuts the sound.

"I'm trying to concentrate."

And Dean turns it on again.

"Then go somewhere else, you whiny bitch."

"Like there is anywhere else to go, jerk."

And on and on and on again it goes.

They end up sprawled on the couch, Sam in a headlock and Dean tells him to say uncle or he won't be doing any homework for the rest of the evening.

Sam gets free—a sharp elbow into Dean's side—gathers up his things and tells him, "Go fuck yourself," never to die, not ever, because Sam learned a long time ago how easy it is to die.

"I would if I could, Sam," Dean calls after him.

Sam goes to sit in the kitchen but still hears the TV, muted and low.

Sometimes, Sam misses the brother who held his hand with an ache that never quite goes away no matter how much he grows, no matter how many inches he gains on Dean, who is like a bright, brilliant star that keeps him in its orbit amidst unfathomable darkness.

***

All the motels by the side of back country roads look the same to Sam, the novelty worn off after the first one. He thinks it's the courtesy of having lived in them half his life.

Cars drive past in the dead of night, splashing light across the bland walls and ceiling, Dad's gone somewhere and Dean's late in a nearby bar. Sam tries to catch some sleep but none of it comes. It's too silent in the room, no Dean snoring and tossing in the bed next to his.

He's staring absently in the darkness, making patterns out of shadows, when he hears a door open and the familiar low rumble of Dean's voice carries through the adjoining wall, then hush and giggles.

Dean with a girl.

Dean never brings girls to the room if Sam is there because, sometimes, to him, Sam never grew past five.

It still doesn't stop the noise. Never does.

Sam turns to his side, brings his legs up toward his chest and throws a pillow over his head to muffle the sounds. He feels ashamed and hot as he listens to Dean's barely audible groans and the girl's loud, drunken moans and the rhythmic creak of old bedsprings, and he's angry, bitter, jealous, only sixteen and stretching and aching every day, but never growing fast enough, wishing he'd be somewhere—anywhere else—but here.

Wishing Dean would be in the bed next to his and not fucking some nameless bar fly. Wishing he'd be Dean, and more fucked up, wishing he'd be the girl.

Sam exhales shakily and thinks about drowning.

***

Once, several times, always a variation, always the same, he would ask Dean a question.

"Don't you want anything else than this?"

Once, several times, always a variation, always the same, Dean would ask him a question.

"What's wrong with this?"

"There's more to life than this, Dean. No one lives like this."

"What more do you want, Sam? What the fuck _is_ more?"

Sam knows how to use words to his advantage, knows they are just as good as suits or knives, knows how to make Dean bleed inside out with just the right tone and just the right choice of words. Dean can shrug off wounds and injuries, but words, he has no defense against words, and Sam is certain the fault for that can be traced right back to Dad like everything else.

He still can't seem to find an answer to Dean's question. Sam has thought about it, has daydreamed about it when only silence is there to keep him company, and the truth is, Sam isn't sure what it is he is looking for. What that more is to him, but he _knows_ it isn't this, living like this—this transient half-life—can't be it. Sam wants something else, anything else than this. He is too damn tired of being scared every day of his life.

"I'm gonna leave this shit someday."

"Hey, you wanna leave so bad, then fucking leave." Derisive. Condescending. Not believing Sam could ever get out if he got the chance. That if he got the chance he wouldn't take it.

Dean stalks out of the room, slams the door behind him, and Sam slides down to his bed, holds his head in his hands, fingers tangled tight in his hair, so angry his blood is burning with it, and tries to find some room to breathe.

***

Eighteen and self-righteous.

He throws the letter of acceptance on the table in front of them, no preamble, no explanation, proud and triumphant and vicious with it.

He watches their dumbfounded faces, which soon transform into grim comprehension, before Dad asks, calm and deadly as if he is lining for a shot, "What is this?"

Dean stands near the sink the entire row and stares at them, stares at Sam with unreadable eyes, pale and mad, and then Dad shouts, "You walk out that door, you better not come back!"

Sam is hurt, stupid with it, painfully young and furious, and he yells back, "Just fucking fine! That's exactly what I wanted!"

Dad slams out and Sam slams into the room he shares— _shared_ —with Dean, snatches the duffel he packed ready, knew how it would go before it even started.

He storms out of the house into the highway and sees Dad rev out with his truck. Probably for a bar as usual when things don't go as per his orders.

Dean comes out after Sam, the old leather jacket on as if he's prepared for a fight, and his face hard like a mask that Sam kind of wants to shatter into a million pieces and see if he could still find his brother behind it. Dean holds his car keys in hand and jerks his head toward the car.

The drive is stifling as they tend to be these days, suffocating the words and air between them. Sam stares out the window at the blur of firs while Dean stares at the road like he's trying to set it on fire and make it burn.

They stop at the bus station, still silent, and some of the violent tension has drained from Sam. Awkwardly he hefts the duffel on his right shoulder. He wants to say something before he leaves— _before he leaves Dean_ —but a punch catches him off guard, throws him off balance.

Dean looks at him with wide eyes that are impossibly green, like the only color left in the world, looks at Sam like he doesn't know him and doesn't really care to. Then he stalks back to the car and drives off. Leaves Sam standing alone in the station.

He never, not once, asks Sam to stay.

That's okay, though.

Sam never quite figured out how to ask him to come with him, either.

***

Sam isn't stupid.

He knows he isn't stupid. He's got all the diplomas and grades to prove it. He got into Stanford with a scholarship. But he is aware that sometimes he gets hung up on details and those details get a life of their own in his mind.

But admitting that everything he yearned for while growing up is all pretty much illusioned bullshit like Dean said it was feels like the worst defeat.

Deep down Sam knew it was just him, what never fit in anywhere, what never belonged. That a different life couldn't change that.

It's not even anything major, and a part of Sam thinks he'd feel better if it were, but all the little things and he knows from experience that all the little things tend to accumulate and inevitably point to an incurable freak.

Sometimes Sam thinks how ironic it is. How he used to bitch and complain about the fake IDs and the constant lies he had to tell, but it isn't really until he lives as Sam Winchester that he lives the biggest lie of his life.

Little wooden Pinocchio was promised a year to become a real boy, but there is no Fairy with Turquoise Hair for Sam.

He has to be mindful of his words, afraid he'll slip something he isn't supposed to and people will _know_ that he doesn't really belong in this sunny, colorful world with lectures and finals, but in his defense he didn't grow up like these people. He didn't grow up with both parents in a pretty little home, with siblings who were more of an annoyance than a necessity to stay sane and alive. He didn't grow up with league games or study groups, with childhood friends and a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody. He didn't grow up with a pet he'd whined to have only to then proceed dumping the responsibilites for it on his parents.

Sam grew up with monsters and ghosts, guns and knives, holy water and salt, with dead languages and runes of protection. He grew up in a car, in and out of motel rooms and abandoned houses. He grew up everywhere and absolutely nowhere, all across the forgotten, dying landscapes of United States. He grew up with Dean who was like the Sun, his gravity just as inexorable and impossible to escape, Sam as the Icarus to his tale, falling in the grace of his fire.

Sam should be happy and he is determined to think that he is. Still, when he talks with the few people he can call friends about lectures and professors and part-time jobs, about parties and the best places to get coffee or beer, he feels an undercurrent of restless dissatisfaction, thrumming silently beneath the mundane conversations like an itch he can't stratch, and sometimes he is struck by this thought of how fucking _meaningless_ it all is. Sometimes he finds himself staring blankly at his essays and thinking how the fuck this is supposed to help anyone, and then he would feel guilty and sick with himself.

When Sam got on the bus, he swore to himself he was done with that life.

But there are days when he feels like he's coming out of his skin and several times he comes perilously close to picking up the phone and asking Dean to come get him.

He is too scared to make the call, though. Too scared Dean won't pick up because he doesn't want to hear Sam's voice ever again, too scared Dean won't pick up because he is lying dead in a ditch somewhere because Sam wasn't there to watch his back, like it's _his_ job to do, too scared it'll be Dad who picks up and tells him Dean is gone.

_See, see what you did, Sam. You got your brother killed._

In the end Sam can only hope that Dean calls him.

He waits for a call that never comes.

Dean always knew his silence hurt more than any punch he threw.

***

Sam avoids newspapers like the plague. If he has to, he would rather watch important news from the small TV he owns or listen to them from the radio that he has sputtering in his kitchen. It's nothing but a selfish precaution, he can admit that.

But one day he forgets and distractedly picks himself a newspaper with his coffee, and an ingrained habit has him skimming over the obituaries before he realizes, and then his heart is thudding in his chest when he detects a definite pattern in the deaths.

His hands shake, sweat prickling to the surface of his skin, as he stares at the smudged black ink and tries figure out what to do, his thoughts a disjointed mess of duty and obligations and what he wants. His blood rushes in his ears and he feels cold, dizzy with something he can't name.

Sam licks his parched lips, and neatly begins folding the paper and sets it aside. It sits innocently on the table, corners precise and crisp. Convulsively Sam swallows and tells himself there was nothing he could have done.

***

When Sam lets himself imagine what he would say to Dean, if he called him, only a question comes to his mind.

_Am I still your brother?_

He isn't sure if he wants to hear what Dean would reply.

***

Dean is better at it, but they both know how to adapt and not stand out, even though Dean always stood out wherever he went, could draw attention just by entering a room. But Sam adjusts, gradually, distance and time dulling out the itch at the back of his mind until he forgets it's even there.

He gets a girlfriend—a girl he met at a bank when he realized he had to open an account and wasn't that an experience Sam isn't in a hurry to repeat—and Jess is cool and gorgeous, tall and fair and easygoing. She doesn't have freckles, but she has cute birthmarks—one hidden behind her ear, one beside her nose and one at the end of her eyebrow.

Sam never quite learns how to love her properly, though; unsure what to say, never tells her anything important and only reluctantly yields information.

"I have a brother."

But Jess keeps asking, more and more and more, looking for something Sam can't give her, doesn't know how to, doesn't know if he even _has_ it to give. Only Dean has ever truly known Sam, all of him, by the simple virtue of existing beside Sam their entire lives. He never had to tell Dean anything; Dean just knew—if not right away then eventually—everything there was to know about Sam. He's never had to _share_ himself with someone, and he's unsure how he feels about it.

"Oh yeah? Were you close?"

Sam wishes it were true, still holds the same old phone and the same old number, waits and waits and waits, endlessly and for nothing. Dean never asked Sam to stay, never called to ask him to come back, and for the first time Sam thinks to himself, _if he doesn't need me, I won't fucking need him, either,_ and aloud he answers,

"Nah. Not really."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
